<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><title>GNUcode.me</title><id>https://gnucode.me/feeds/tags/console guix.xml</id><subtitle>Tag: console guix</subtitle><updated>2024-05-08T13:40:23Z</updated><link href="https://gnucode.me/feeds/tags/console guix.xml" rel="self" /><link href="https://gnucode.me" /><entry><title>Console only computing</title><id>https://gnucode.me/console-only-computing.html</id><author><name>Joshua Branson</name><email>jbranso@dismail.de</email></author><updated>2022-02-12T10:40:00Z</updated><link href="https://gnucode.me/console-only-computing.html" rel="alternate" /><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;For about two weeks now, I have been using Guix System in console mode only.
That means that my laptop currently &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; display images or video. It also
means that I do not have much use for a mouse. It has been an interesting
experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the average reader of this blog must be asking, “Why?”. Well you are
familiar with dumb and smart phones, yes? Have you ever heard of a &lt;strong&gt;life
computer&lt;/strong&gt;? A life computer, is a computer that is so useless, that you want to
stop using it and live your life instead. I personally have been using my laptop
to consume tons of entertainment tv shows, movies, etc. I am starting to feel
like that this is just wasting my life. Some of my good friends do not have time
for useless entertainment-seeking. Since I want to emulate the best of my
friends, I would like to make it nearly impossible for me to consume mindless
entertainment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emacs has been an absolute Godsend for this little experiment.  Since, I am
somewhat familiar with Emacs, I am still able to check email (though I still
struggle with reading email with Emacs), write these blog posts, use dired, etc.
I am not certain that I could live in a console only operating system without
Emacs.  Also Emacs’s org-mode is wonderful!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also found out that &lt;code&gt;Alt-&amp;lt;left arrow key&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Alt-&amp;lt;right arrow key&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; is a
quick way to cycle through virtual consoles. I am having some issues with being
unable to use numerous websites. This is pretty obvious, because most console
web browsers have little to no support for javascript.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am currently wanting to listen to some &lt;a href=&quot;https://librevox.org&quot;&gt;librevox&lt;/a&gt; recordings, but I am not
certain how to navigate the website in console mode. Lynx spits out some errors
that the HTML is badly formatted or something. For now, I am just using the work
computers to download said files. I wonder if there is some sort of free
software tool that will let you search and download audio files from the command
line…I am sure it exists somewhere. &lt;code&gt;youtube-dl&lt;/code&gt; would probably be it, but I
feel awkward downloading files from youtube, because I am not certain which
videos are legal for me to download.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am planning on continuing to run a console only OS for the forseeable future.
Since I do not feel like I have the power to NOT use my computer to watch lots
of tv shows/movies, I gave my friend the root password to my computer, and I
removed my user ’joshua’ from the &lt;code&gt;wheel&lt;/code&gt; group:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(users (cons* (user-account
               (name &amp;quot;joshua&amp;quot;)
               (comment &amp;quot;Joshua Branson&amp;quot;)
               (group &amp;quot;users&amp;quot;)
               (home-directory &amp;quot;/home/joshua&amp;quot;)
               (supplementary-groups
                '(&amp;quot;audio&amp;quot; &amp;quot;kvm&amp;quot; &amp;quot;netdev&amp;quot;
                  )))
              %base-user-accounts))&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;I also set up my computer to use a modified &lt;code&gt;bare-bones.scm&lt;/code&gt;, which means that I am
using ’%base-services’ instead of ’%desktop-services’.  I kind of wonder how
lean I could make a custom Linux kernel since I am restricting myself to console
computing only.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am finding that I would prefer to run some commands as root, like halt,
reboot, and adding in a new wifi network connection. It has actually been a
pleasure to read through &lt;code&gt;man 5 sudoers&lt;/code&gt;, which is the file on your computer
that determines who can run which commands. I have not quite figured out how to
set up my user &lt;code&gt;joshua&lt;/code&gt; to be able do various tasks like halt, reboot, kill,
etc., but I am looking forward to figuring it out. It will probably look like
something below. Note that I have NOT tested this bit of code.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;;; I can read 'man 5 suoders' for tips about the syntax of suoders file.
;; the very end of the file has some examples.
(sudoers-file
 (plain-file &amp;quot;sudoers&amp;quot;
             (string-append (plain-file-content %sudoers-specification)
                            &amp;quot;CMD_Alias KILL = /run/current-system/profile/bin/kill
                            CMD_Alias SHUTDOWN = /run/current-system/profile/bin/shutdown
                            CMD_Alias HALT = /run/current-system/profile/bin/halt
                            CMD_Alias REBOOT = /run/current-system/profile/bin/reboot
                            CMD_Alias HERD = /run/current-system/profile/bin/HERD
                            CMD_Alias NMCLI = /run/current-system/profile/bin/nmcli
                            joshua ALL = KILL, SHUTDOWN, HALT, REBOOT, HERD, NMCLI, \
                            sudoedit /etc/somefile, /etc/another-file&amp;quot;
                            )))&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;That’s all that I have for today.  See you next time.&lt;/p&gt;</content></entry></feed>